Chapter Text
It would be difficult to disguise a crossbow attack in the middle of a Soho street as anything other than an attempt at cold-blooded murder, and she didn’t want to draw the attention of any local authorities.
This was her first trip to London in a very long time, and spending the day being questioned at a police station sounded super annoying.
Fortunately, her target seemed to be an introvert, and she’d learned over the past few days that he typically took his coffee to go. She followed him until he reached his car—a sleek, black, expensive-looking vehicle. Clearly, he was compensating for something.
They were alone in the alleyway.
With steady hands, she reached for the bolt nestled in the quiver strapped to her back. She carefully dipped it into the vial of holy water she carried in her pocket—not enough to kill immediately, just enough to severely weaken the demon until she could question it. Bringing the bolt to the notch at the front of the crossbow, she slid it into place with practiced precision, breathing deeply as it seated itself with a faint click.
She raised the crossbow and trained the sights on the demon. Exhaling slowly, she pulled the trigger, knowing as soon as the bolt was released that it was a perfect shot, center mass.
She slung the crossbow over her shoulder and sprinted toward the demon, expecting it to collapse to the ground, but for some odd reason, it was still standing.
Not only standing but looking really ticked off.
She skidded to a halt in front of it, breathing hard, shocked at the fact that the demon was not only upright but frowning at her like she was a naughty puppy with muddy paws.
“This,” he hissed, grabbing his jacket and inspecting the tear ripped by the crossbow bolt, “is Armani.”
He grasped the bolt by the feathered end and pulled it out of his chest, glaring at it before pointing it in her direction.
“You shot me… with a holy-water-infused arrow,” he said in a tone of disbelief. “Now there’s a fucking hole in my beautiful jacket, and you made me spill my coffee. Bloody hell. Explain yourself.”
Her jaw fell open involuntarily as she stared at the irritated demon. Regaining her composure, she swiftly reached into her pocket, seized the vial, and brandished it threateningly.
“I’ll splash you with the whole thing this time you…fiendy…fiend,” she warned.
Instead of cowering like a normal demon, he pursed his lips and raised one eyebrow at her.
“Go ahead,” he said, crossing his arms in a petulant huff.
“OK, I’ll speak slowly, using small words. You’re a demon. This is holy water. But you don’t seem scared. So… ‘splainy?”
“What makes you think I’m a demon?” the demon chuckled. “Just because I’m wearing all black and have a snake tattoo? That’s quite judgy of you. Maybe I’m just a non-conformist.”
“You look like an aging rock star with a lot of childhood trauma,” she scoffed.
“Oh yeah? Well, you look like— like a…”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Just give me a minute.”
She mimicked his stance by crossing her arms and offering up an exaggerated pout.
“Yeah, I got nothing,” he finally said with a shrug. “So, who are you, and why are you shooting innocent bystanders with a crossbow in the middle of Soho?”
“Ugh,” she moaned. “Really? I’m a slayer. You, being a demon, are a slayee. Not even in the same universe as innocent or bystander.”
“Not a demon,” the demon responded. “You Yanks are so reactionary. Now, I’m going to get in my car and drive away, and you are going to—”
With lightning-fast reflexes, she snatched the dark glasses off his face, revealing a pair of bright yellow snake eyes, which were now widening in astonishment.
“You were saying?” she asked, dangling the sunglasses from one finger. “Now, why didn’t the holy water work on you?”
“Because he has divine protection from God.”
The voice came from behind her, and she spun around.
“Who has what now?” she asked the stranger, who pointedly ignored her. Instead, he approached the demon, running his hands over his jacket as if checking for damage.
“She shot me with a crossbow,” the demon sulked.
“Oh, my dear, are you all right?” asked the 18th-century English professor.
“It stung… a lot, and she ripped my jacket. This was my favorite.”
“I know, darling. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it right up for you.”
“Thanks, angel.”
“I don’t mean to poop the party here,” she said, “but, um… what?”
The anachronistically-dressed man sighed and gestured for her to follow him.
“You may want to cancel your trip, darling,” he said to the demon. “Obviously, this needs to be addressed rather quickly.”
The lanky redhead made a noise that suggested he’d forgotten how vowels worked, but he followed the shorter blonde man who was giving off serious Giles vibes and what was it about posh, old British guys that made her feel like she was a teenager in detention?
She was a fully grown adult-ish woman with her own apartment and a car and a cat and everything. In fact, these two looked to be close to her own age, although the demon at least could obviously choose to look any age he wanted.
Which begged the question, why look like a 50-something when you could look like a 20-something?
If I could look 20 again, oh, I totally would. I used to rock a miniskirt, she thought regretfully. I mean, Willow tells me to embrace my inner Goddess and that aging is just a state of mind and blah blah blah whatever; she’s a witch. She can also look like whatever she wants. Ugh. Focus.
The demon and the man, who was possibly also a demon but also maybe under the demon’s thrall and being held against his will, were both looking expectantly at her.
Shrugging, she set off after them, following them into a building on the corner across from the coffee shop.
It was a bookstore with the lofty name of A.Z. Fell & Co., and it was obvious by the way the blonde man unlocked the door and ushered them inside that he owned the place. More Giles vibes, she shuddered. What is it about painfully proper aging British men and working around loads of books?
“I do believe introductions are in order,” said Giles’ long-lost younger brother. “I’m Aziraphale, and that’s Crowley.”
He appeared to be done with that sentence, which was, frankly, unacceptable.
“And…?” she waved her hand at the two of them, inviting them to fill in the blanks.
“And—you are?”
Oh, Giles’ snobby cousin was really starting to piss her off.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Buffy Summers. Human… with supernatural powers to slay demons, vampires and other unholy and annoying non-humans. See how that’s done? Now, let’s try you again. I already know he’s a demon. But I can’t quite get a read on you—my Slayer senses tell me you’re not human, but also not… demon-y. Or vampire-y. Or otherwise monster-y.”
“Would you like some tea?” asked the swanky blonde in his stupid bowtie.
“Angel, seriously,” groaned the demon. Crowley, his name was. Handy thing to know—a demon’s name. Could be used for all sorts of banishing and other forms of getting rid of. “Nobody, at all, wants tea right now. Break out the good stuff.”
Aziraphale—what kind of a name was that?—chuckled fondly and reached into a cabinet above the stove. And why did a demon need a stove? Or a bookshop, for that matter.
They settled into some overstuffed, possibly vintage (a nice word for old, dusty and decrepit) chairs while the demon poured them each a drink.
“Slayer,” said Aziraphale. “Yes, I’ve heard of your order. You’ve done marvellous work over the years, a lot of keeping-the-forces-of-darkness-at-bay kind of thing.”
He accompanied this praise with a disconcerting wiggle and a smile that was nonetheless quite charming despite being offered by a potential minion of Satan.
“How patronizing of you to notice,” Buffy said, accepting the drink and sniffing it suspiciously. “You still haven’t told me what you are.”
“He’s an angel, for Go– for Sa–, for Someone’s sake,” groaned the geriatric lead singer in a rock-metal band. “I literally just said that.”
“You’re wound tight,” Buffy noted. “And I could still kill you, ya know.”
“I could turn you into a lizard,” the demon shot back. “Not the cute kind, either. The bumpy kind that makes people scream and want to squish you with a shoe.”
“I’ve been turned into worse,” Buffy shrugged, finally deciding to try the drink. It was smoky, dark and delicious. If it was going to kill her, at least she’d go drunk and happy. “So, what’s an angel doing hanging out with a demon? Aren’t you, like, mortal enemies?”
The alleged angel took a sip of his own drink, closing his eyes briefly and sighing in apparent delight.
“We’re not ‘hanging out’, my dear,” he said, still channeling Giles to an unacceptably accurate degree. “We’re married. Although I suppose that does involve a certain level of, um, association that one could consider to be in the realm of…”
At this point, the snake-demon groaned loudly and flopped back onto one of the musty old sofas with his arm over his face like a swooning belle, clearly done with the conversation.
“Ah, yes, anyway,” said Aziraphale. “Suppose you tell us about you? What brings you to England? With a crossbow? Which you used to try to kill my husband?”
The blonde’s stormy blue eyes darkened, his brow furrowing as he examined her, and Buffy felt a shiver ripple down her spine. That shiver had saved her life many times, and she wasn’t inclined to ignore it. She’d need to tread carefully around this one.
“Firstly, not kill. I just wanted to incapacitate him so I could question him.” That didn’t seem to appease the angel very much, if at all. Moving on.
“Secondly, there’s a huge coven of vamps somewhere nearby, and they’re up to something even creepier and uglier than most covens,” she said. “Something involving demons.”
The angel shot a glance at the sofa, where the demon had sat up and was frowning.
“C’mon, angel, you know I’m persona non grata down there,” he said. “I’d be the last one to know about any sinister plots involving vampires.”
Figures, Buffy thought. I run into the one demon who is even more clueless than I am.
Seeming to read her mind, the demon smirked and said, “Guess we’re no use to you, Fluffy. Good luck with your slaying and all.”
Oh, well, that was just…
“Not so fast, Crawl-ey,” Buffy spat. “You may be an outcast, but you’re still a demon. I have no idea what that means. But probably something.”
Crowley rolled his bright yellow eyes.
“I mean, don’t you have any friends down there who could tell you anything?” She was grasping, and she knew it, but damn, seriously—what were the odds of the first demon she found in England being the only one who was completely and utterly useless?
“It’s Hell, you nitwit,” groaned Crowley. “You don’t make friends in Hell.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Buffy smirked. “But you clearly don’t have my charming personality and joie de vivre.”
“Wonderful. Be my guest, then. See you in Hell. Or not, because I won’t be there, but that was fun to say anyway.”
The professorial librarian angel cleared his throat and said, “Buffy, my dear, why don’t you tell us what you know so far, and we’ll go from there?”
That ‘my dear’ stuff was going to jump on her last nerve.
“Alright, so, I heard some rumors from some local vamps—local to me, that is—and they were all, ‘oh, those English vamps are so cool because they’re working with actual demons and we should do that, too!’
“So Giles—that’s my Watcher, he’s probably related to you in some creepy way—did some reading in some big, fancy books with pictures and stuff, and it turns out that if a demon and a vamp were to, uh, cross… breed… ew… sorry, I just threw up a little in the back of my throat.”
“They’re trying to breed vampire-demons?” asked the snake guy, also sounding grossed out but, like, in a fascinated way. “The strength and speed of a vampire combined with heat and daylight resistance and the ability to perform miracles.”
“That would make them much less prone to being slayed,” Buffy said glumly.
“And more difficult to smite,” added the angel.
The trio contemplated this horrific scenario for a moment.
Buffy broke the silence, “But I have no idea how they’re doing it. I mean. I know how breeding works, obviously, like y’know, for a human.”
“But somehow, you doubt they’re having massive underground demon-vamp orgies?”
Snakey demon was having too much fun with this. Apparently, his husband thought so, too, because he set a gentle hand on the demon’s thigh and shook his head, his brow furrowed as if in pain. The demon stopped yapping, though, so it was apparent the angel was the one holding the leash in this relationship.
“I mean, can demons, um… do that?”
“Have sex?” asked the angel, and his posh, cultured voice made it sound like he was talking about crocheting doilies. “Yes, if they, uh, choose to manifest the appropriate anatomical, er, features.” He sounded calm, but his cheeks were flushed bright pink and the thirsty way his eyes lingered on the demon was seriously TMI.
Buffy was intrigued despite the ick factor.
“You mean, you’re all Ken-doll down there? Unless you, like, grow a pair?” Grow a pair, she chuckled to herself. My mind is a 12-year-old boy.
Crowley laughed aloud, but Aziraphale drew himself up primly and shot her a disapproving look.
“I don’t believe that’s relevant, my dear,” he chided gently. “What is pertinent is that demons can’t breed like humans. No matter how closely their biology mimics humans while they’re here on Earth, they aren’t able to become pregnant or to impregnate others.”
“Sounds like you’ve studied this,” she remarked with a raised brow.
“I read a lot,” he replied dryly, not bothering to draw her attention to the stockpile of books surrounding them.
“Sounds like you need to find out how they’re planning to do this,” said Crowley, stretching out on his sofa as if preparing for a nap. “Good luck!”
“Unless you want a horde of practically un-slayable and un-smiteable vamp-demons running amok all over England, I suggest you start with the helpy-ness,” said Buffy.
“She’s right, dear,” said Aziraphale, turning to his husband. “This could be disastrous. It could be another Armageddon.”
“More like a zombie apocalypse, but if the zombies were really fast and strong and could move about in sunlight, use magic, and couldn’t be set on fire,” retorted Crowley. “Although holy water would still work.”
Aziraphale scoffed, rolling his eyes in a manner reminiscent of Buffy’s worst teenage tantrums. “Yes, I suppose we could fly over the teeming masses of bloodthirsty monsters and crop-dust them. But then they could seek shelter underground, and we can't possibly make it rain holy water forever. We certainly don't want another flood."
“You think my plan is awful,” pouted Crowley.
“Oh, darling, not awful, exactly.” Aziraphale moved to the sofa and ran his fingers soothingly through the demon’s red hair. “Just highly impractical and ill-conceived.”
“Well, that’s alright then,” the demon replied, practically purring under the angel’s attention.
Gross. And now they were kissing. Just right there in front of her, callously reminding her that she didn’t have a boyfriend and hadn’t been kissed in, well, a really depressingly long time.
“You’re gonna have to go to Hell,” she said, not one bit sad about breaking up their lip-lock.
“What part of ‘I-married-an-angel’ makes you think I’d be welcomed back there?” Crowley snapped.
“You’re the only demon we have, even though apparently you’re really stupidly bad at being one.”
Before Crowley could protest, Aziraphale turned to him in excitement.
“Why don’t we bring Hell to us instead?”
“That sounds fun,” drawled Buffy. “Let’s have a tea party!”
“The summoning scroll,” said Crowley, nodding at Aziraphale and starting to also look alarmingly eager.
“Someone start making sense, or at least, be sense-adjacent in some way.”
“At our cottage, a few hours’ drive from here,” said Aziraphale. “There’s a scroll that can be used to summon demons or angels. We can bring a demon to us who may have more information.”
“I know just the demon,” chuckled Crowley. His husband grinned and said, “You think—?”
“Definitely, he hates it down there, would probably tell us whatever we want.”
“Well, let’s go then!” said Buffy.
“My car’s right outside,” said Crowley, standing and sliding another pair of dark glasses over his eyes.
“Car? You can’t just—” she snapped her fingers a couple of times, “and voila, and we’re there?”
“Can you?” growled Crowley, stomping to the door and slinging it open.
“I mean," she retorted, "I have a witch friend who probably could.”
“We’re only allowed a certain amount of miracle energy,” Aziraphale explained in a low voice as his husband flounced off ahead of them like a moody teenager. “And Crowley and I, we try to keep a low profile when we can.”
“Yeah, I guess I can understand that. The whole marrying-your-hereditary-enemy thing probably didn’t fly well with either of your bosses, huh?”
“A lot of things we did didn’t, um, ‘fly well’ with them.”
The trip was actually not too bad. Crowley drove fast and well, and the radio weirdly and suspiciously played all of her favorite songs.
“You have the musical taste of a clinically depressed 20-something with no social life who lives alone in her parents' house and has multiple cats,” remarked Crowley.
“If she has cats, then she’s not alone, is she?” Buffy retorted from the backseat. “Plus, living with her parents is, like, a sound decision, financially, considering the rising cost of housing in most urban areas.”
“And the cats would likely alleviate much of her depression,” Aziraphale chimed in, providing an unexpected source of support.
Crowley simply grumbled and drove faster.
“Wow, being an angel and a demon must be lucrative,” said Buffy, gazing in wonder at Crowley and Aziraphale’s cottage on the beach.
“We worked very hard on restoring and upgrading this place. It was a complete mess when we first moved in,” said the angel.
“I like how he says ‘we’ like he ever picked up a hammer,” grinned Crowley, hugging his husband to his side.
“I provided moral support and encouragement,” Aziraphale huffed while returning the demon’s embrace.
These two. The cuteness was reaching unacceptable levels.
Crowley sauntered to the back wall of their living room and moved aside a framed picture that looked like a pretty good replication sketch of the Mona Lisa—not that Buffy was an art history major or anything. Underneath was a wall safe.
Aziraphale joined him, and they each placed one hand on the safe's door. It glowed bright green for a moment and then clicked open.
Only one object was inside—an ancient-looking scroll rolled up and bound with a leather strap.
Crowley removed it, raising an eyebrow at his angelic spouse.
“Do you want to do the honours?”
“Oh, no, my dear,” Aziraphale demurred. “I know you enjoy this part tremendously.”
Crowley planted a kiss on the angel’s slightly upturned nose, prompting an eye-roll from Buffy, and then unrolled the scroll. Holding the edges of it in both hands, he began to recite some words that meant absolutely nothing to Buffy’s ears, and she’d heard a lot of witchy nonsense in her lifetime.
The air around them shivered and shimmered, and within seconds, something—no, some one—materialized in front of them. A young man, appearing to be in his 20s, with skin the color of coffee touched with cream and dark hair that sharpened into two points on top of his head, like… like horns. Must be the demon, Buffy surmised, patting herself on the back for her powers of deductive reasoning.
The demon's face showed surprise, then recognition, and finally, joy as he took in the two men-presenting beings before him.
“Crowley!” he cried, actually clapping his hands. He turned and, much more formally, said, “And Supreme Archangel Aziraphale.”
“Supreme what-now?” asked Buffy. “That’s a very, um, big-title kind of titley thing.”
“Please, just call me Aziraphale, Eric,” said the angel, not bothering to respond to Buffy’s interjection.
“Eric, come on in. Do you have time for a drink?” asked Crowley, as if summoning an actual demon from Hell and then offering him a drink was just a Monday for him. Maybe it was.
Eric’s face fell like that of a scolded puppy dog. If he had a tail, it’d be drooping behind him.
“I wish. Shax has me on intake duty. The line will start backing up even more than it already is, and then she’ll get cross and then she’ll start hunting for me. But I have a couple of minutes ‘til that happens. I’d heard you had a summoning scroll—that’s so cool, did you really use it to summon Shax one time? Man, she was rankled about that for ages.”
“Eric,” Aziraphale broke in gently. “We need your assistance.”
“Oh yeah, man, er, uh Supreme—um—Aziraphale. Of course, whatever I can do.” Now, he was an eager puppy, tail wagging and eyes bright.
Crowley briefly recapped what Buffy told them, introducing her in the process.
“Oh yeah, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces, rumours, gossip, whatnot,” said Eric, who seemed constitutionally incapable of uttering a sentence that got straight to the point. “I’ve heard of you, of course,” he continued, nodding at Buffy. “You’re not particularly popular down there.”
“I’m super disappointed about that.”
“So, um, what I’ve heard is talk of something called a ‘Blood Altar’, which they’re setting up topside, here, on Earth. They’re, like, all over in mystical places, Stonehenge and places like that.
“Shax keeps mentioning something about ‘the flaming sword’ they’ll use to complete a ritual to combine vampire and demon blood. She has me checking on it occasionally. Making sure it’s still all flamey and such. Mostly just giving me busy work and making me walk aaalllll the way down to the ninth circle, and— ”
“What flaming sword?” Crowley interrupted, casting a suspicious look at his husband, who was suddenly flushed pink for some reason.
“Oh it’s this really amazing relic, got a lot of mystical energy attached to it,” Eric blathered on, completely heedless of the non-verbal messages passing between Crowley and Aziraphale. “I heard it once belonged to some big-deal angel, who gave it away, and then found it again, and then gave it away again and then Lord Beelzebub… er… the Traitor Beelzebub, that is, stole it and brought it to Hell!”
"What does he mean, you gave it away again?" asked Crowley, whose husband was all fidgety and blushing. "I thought you gave it to that delivery guy."
"So, I sort of… requisitioned it… when I went to Heaven last time," the angel said, obviously avoiding Crowley's eyes. "I thought it might come in handy, you know, averting the apocalypse and all that."
"Which apocalypse?" asked Buffy. All three celestial-infernal beings turned to look at her, perplexed.
“What do you mean, which one?” Crowley asked.
“I mean, there’ve been several. Well, several almost ones. That I and my team averted. Dunno where you guys were at the time. Probably drinking. Definitely not helping.”
Crowley pointed at her. “We’re going to return to that subject, Slayer,” he said, then turned back to Aziraphale.
"So, you stole your old sword, and then somehow managed to give it away… again?"
“Possibly,” the angel mumbled.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly… probably. Oh, Crowley, it was that charming child— you know, the one who stood up to War and basically disintegrated her. Well, she made a very good point about the inevitability of War returning and, well… since I no longer had need of it I thought…”
“So, you gave it to Pepper, and then Beelzebub stole it from her, and nobody thought to, I dunno, tell me that one of Heaven’s most powerful artifacts is now residing in Hell?” Crowley sounded somehow more amused than angry, Buffy thought.
“In my defense, I didn’t know it had been stolen,” huffed Aziraphale.
“You gave it to an actual child!”
“She seemed quite capable, Crowley.”
“Mmmmm.” The demon paced in a tight circle, holding his head while literal steam billowed from him.
“Erm, I've got to get back,” said Eric. “Before Shax notices I’m gone and makes me clean out the dung pits or something even worse.”
“What could be worse than a dung pit in Hell?” asked Buffy. “Actually, never mind, don’t answer that.”
Crowley pulled the scroll from his pocket.
“Eric, I have a feeling I’ll be joining you soon,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone about this, obviously, yeah?”
“Of course not, Crowley! I would never!”
Crowley clutched the scroll and recited more witchy-mystical words, and Eric the demon faded away, waving at them and grinning.
“Do you trust him?” Buffy asked, raising an eyebrow at Crowley, whose steam was rapidly settling to a fine mist.
“I mean, yeah, as much as you can trust any demon. Eric’s a good guy. I mean, a bad demon. I mean…”
“Yeah, OK, alright,” she broke in.
“You’re very impatient,” noted Crowley.
“We’re on the verge of the…” she stopped to count on her fingers, whispering under her breath, “four, five… eleventh! The 11th apocalypse! So pardon me if I don’t have time to listen to this lack-of-words thing that you’ve got going on. Whatever that’s called—when you can’t think of what you’re trying to say? There’s a word for that.”
“There have not been ten prior apocalypses. Apocalyi? What’s the plural of apocalypse, angel?”
“There shouldn’t need to be a plural for apocalypse,” said Buffy, her voice rising. “It should sorta be a one-and-done kinda thing, right? But apparently, you two somehow managed to avert one I didn’t know about, so that would make this one the TWELFTH.”
“Well, no, actually,” said Aziraphale. “We stopped two of them. Furthermore, ‘apocalypses’ is the preferred form, and lethologica is the word for inability to remember a certain word. Unless it’s related to a medical cause, in which case it would be anomia.”
Both Buffy and Crowley looked at the angel for a moment before Crowley leaned in to kiss him again. “You’re so clever,” he whispered, pressing their foreheads together. “It’s very sexy when you do that.”
“Mmm, that’s why I do it, my dear,” murmured the angel, returning his husband’s kisses.
Buffy groaned and started pacing in her own tight circle while clutching her head.
Hmmm. Felt good. She could see why the demon did it. Wish I could let off actual steam, too, she thought.
“That makes this pending apocalypse the thirteenth,” she said. “Fuck.”
“That’s not a good number,” noted Crowley helpfully. “If we survive, will you tell us about apocalypses one through ten?”
“I’m going to have to go to Hell and retrieve your flaming sword, angel.”
Aziraphale began shaking his head even before Crowley finished the sentence, his jaw set in a stubborn line.
“No, you most certainly will not,” the angel retorted. “They’ll destroy you, and then I’ll have to smite all of them, and then the world will most definitely end in fire and ashes.”
And they were kissing again, gazing sappily into each other’s eyes and mooning about like they had all the time in the world and like Buffy wasn’t chronically single and miserable about it.
“Good God,” she said. “You,” she pointed at Aziraphale. “Stop saying smart and or badass things. This one,” now pointing at Crowley, “can’t handle it, and we need him focused.”
“My dear girl, Crowley has known me for thousands of years,” Aziraphale said, between kisses, which only made the demon clutch him tighter. “He can most certainly handle me."
Buffy flung herself onto the sofa, groaning.
"But my point stands, "Aziraphale continued. "Crowley is not going to Hell. Eric can fetch the sword.”
At this, Crowley managed to tear his lips from the angel long enough to say, “Eric? You trust him with something this important?”
“He said he has access to it; Shax makes him clean and inspect it regularly.”
“There's a big difference between completing Shax's humiliating and degrading tasks and sneaking out one of the most powerful and undoubtedly one of the most well-guarded artifacts of Hell from its chamber, through all nine circles, to the elevator, and getting it to Earth and into our hands,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale closed his eyes and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. He did this a couple of times. It didn’t seem to be doing much for his mood if his clenched jaw and furrowed brow were any indication.
When he opened his eyes, they were shining with tears.
“I can’t lose you, Crowley,” he whispered.
“Angel.” Crowley cradled Aziraphale’s face in his palms. “If we don’t stop this, we’ll lose each other, and the entire Earth as well. You know that.”
“No, I don’t know that!” cried the angel, backing out of his husband’s embrace. “Let the vampire-demons run amok. Eventually, they’ll run out of humans to kill, and then they’ll all kill each other. We’ll hide out until it’s over.”
“That’s not really very angelic,” Buffy pointed out, thinking it was a helpful reminder, but Aziraphale turned to her, and his eyes were blazing. That wasn’t a metaphor; his eyes were actually glowing like… well, like something really blue and bright. A police car? Hmmm, what else is—
“I say you go to Hell and fetch the sword,” he snarled. “You’re a Slayer. It’s your actual job to kill demons.”
“You want me, by myself, to take on every single demon in Hell? I mean, I’m good. Like way more badass than you, even. Probably. But that’s above my pay grade. How about I go with Crowley? I can help protect him.”
Crowley shook his head quickly.
"I've got a solid plan that I'm sure will work, but I can't risk having a human shadowing me down there. That would mess everything up."
“How sure is sure, exactly?” Buffy asked while Aziraphale stood off to the side, frowning. The blaze in his eyes was banked but not gone.
“Mmmm, I’m going to say at least 65 percent sure,” said Crowley, bumping it up to “definitely, totally 95 percent” after Aziraphale’s eyes got all glowy again.
“And the plan?”
Crowley turned to his husband and held out his hands in appeal.
“You’re going to have to smite me.”